Parable of the Day: A Daughter Complained to Her Dad about Her Struggles

A daughter who was tired of struggling with her life problems went to her father to complain. In his wisdom, he gave her a parable to help make sense of her problems.

One day, a distressed daughter went to her father on the verge of tears. She complained to him about how miserable her life was. She said she did not think she was going to make it in life.

Exhausted with struggling, the daughter told her father that it seemed there was something against her progress. Every time she got one problem out of the way, another sprung right up, even stronger than the last.

After listening to his daughter’s woes, the father, who was a chef, got up from his chair and led her to his kitchen. There, he filled three pots with water and put them each on a high fire.

A little while after he placed the pots on the cooker, the chef placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in the second, and ground coffee beans in the third. Without saying a word, he let them sit and boil.

After several minutes, the daughter was already impatient as she wondered how this odd experiment had anything to do with her problems. When twenty minutes passed, the father turned off the three burners.

After he left the pots to cool, he took out the potatoes and placed them in a bowl. He did the same for the eggs, ladled the coffee out, and poured it into a cup.

After he did all these, the father turned to his daughter and asked her what she saw. She impatiently replied, saying that she saw potatoes, eggs, and coffee. The father nodded and asked her to touch the potatoes and break the eggs.

The daughter did so, noting that the potatoes were soft and the eggs which she broke were hard-boiled. When she took a sip of the coffee, she smiled softly at the sweet and rich aroma.

Still confused, she looked to her father and asked him what all of this meant. The wise father smiled softly at his daughter and explained:

“The potatoes, eggs, and coffee beans each faced the same adversity — the boiling water. However, each of them reacted differently.”

He continued saying the potato went in strong and unrelenting but came out soft and weak. The eggs were fragile and only protected by their thin shell. Upon boiling, they came out hard and strong on the inside.

As for the coffee beans, they reacted uniquely. After being exposed to the hot water, they changed the water and created something new. He looked straight at his daughter and asked: “Which one are you?”

Moral: when things get tough and seemingly unyielding in life, the only thing that truly matters is how one reacts and what they make out of it. Life is about learning and adapting to one’s environment to make the best of it.